Shallow victory for China's journalists, protesters

Shi
Junrong, Xi'an Evening News bureau chief in the city of Wei'an, ran into
trouble recently after he reported on the costly brand of luxury cigarettes
favored by local officials. He announced on his microblog that the paper
suspended him soon after, according to the U.S. government-funded Radio
Free Asia.

That
might have been the end of the story if it weren't for the public outrage that
ensued in the comments section and the media. In fact, "his suspension drew
even more attention than the original story," as Chinese Communist Party
mouthpiece, the China
Daily, said in its coverage of
the incident. The China Youth Daily published this editorial,
translated by Hong Kong University's China Media Project: "Journalists'
rights are a barometer for the rights of a society and public at large. When
the rights of journalists are violated, when the rights of journalists are not
protected, there is little hope that the rights of the people will be ensured,
that their rights will not be violated."

If
you're surprised to read such a stirring defense of media freedom in the
mainstream Chinese press, you shouldn't be. In 2010,
CPJ took a look at the growing defense of journalists' rights in China and
found that these statements were neither uncommon nor censored. Nor are they
incompatible with the government's position on investigative journalism, or
"supervision by public opinion." On the contrary, this pro-rights mentality is
encouraged by official statements. Take
the Shi Junrong case: General Administration of Press and Publication official Nong
Tao was quoted in news accounts
defending Shi's report.

Journalists
take advantage of this apparent permissiveness to protest against "silencing,"
CPJ found, in ways that indicate their dissatisfaction with the broader,
government-run industry of information control--but only obliquely. Singling out
officials who try and keep their wasteful smoking habits from scrutiny might be
OK, but accusing the Communist Party of imprisoning journalists remains
off limits. What's concerning is that sanctioned protests, while they are
limited in this way, create the appearance of official accountability, but ultimately
lack substance. As we said in 2010, "the creation of narrow, state-sanctioned
press rights benefits the Chinese government ... by providing a limited outlet
for journalists' concerns while diverting criticism and advocacy away from its
own policies of information control."

The
strategy of diverting criticism is perfectly illustrated by the week's other
big media story in China: environmental protests in Shifang, western China,
over a metal plant that locals feared would cause pollution. Police targeted
protesters documenting the unrest, and censors erased coverage from social
media, yet the sometimes-violent clashes were still the most searched topic on Weibo,
Sina's microblog service, on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. When the local
government cancelled building at the plant which had sparked the riots and released
some detained protesters, the international press almost universally hailed it
as a victory for the people.

Officials
kowtowing to citizens' demands to quell protests has become routine in China,
but the follow-through has not. Officials in Dalian said a chemical plant would
be closed after protesters took to the streets in August
2011, but it resumed production in January, according to CNN.
Authorities in Xiamen acceded to demonstrators' demands to move a chemical
plant in 2007, but publicly pursued the protest organizers, according to law
professor Benjamin Van Rooij from the Netherlands.

Journalists defending Shi Junrong, and middle-class
locals defending their hometown in Shifang, may be articulating their rights
and demanding more from China's leaders. But they are also perpetuating a cycle
of protests that authorities can diffuse without the need for reform or redress
for serious injustice. That is not a victory.

Madeline Earp is senior researcher for CPJ’s Asia Program. She has studied Mandarin in China and Taiwan, and graduated with a master’s in East Asian studies from Harvard. Follow her on Twitter @cpjasia and Facebook @ CPJ Asia Desk.